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Tuesday, 4 February 2014

Last September Roux started school and came home talking about Skylanders. I don't have a clue and as we have no games console roundly ignored it all.

Skylanders chat continued.

The adverts on tv started.

"Can I have Skylanders for Christmas"

In January I gave in and bought an Xbox360 and the game (plus nearly 20 Skylanders!) in the sales and with it bore a new obsession in Chez KitschStitch. Roll on February and I'm now planning a Skylander party for a very excited nearly 5 year old.

Just like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Party I threw for him last year, there was very little in the way of official merchandise that I could get in the UK (and I was unwilling to import from the US for megabucks) so I had little choice but to get crafting.

The Skylander figures themselves are highly detailed so I've left them for now but do have some ideas. Instead I decided to choose the first bad guy you encounter in the game - Chompies.

These wee critters arrive en masse frequently and are pretty easily killed, they also looked to be fairly simple and the easier to start with. So I gathered together a few supplies and decided to have a go.

You will need:

• Polysterene balls (about 3" in diameter)

• Floristry wire or any other sturdy wire. I chose floristry wire as it's already green.

• Green tissue paper

• Green poster paint

• Modelling clay (air dry) or fimo

• White paper

• Red card

• PVA glue

• Black felt tip pen

• Masking tape

You will also need scissors, wire cutters, paint brush and a pot to mix the glue.

First, take some modelling clay and divide into two equal parts. Roll these into balls approximately half an inch in diameter.

Cut the floristry wire into 3 inch sections.

Squash the balls into rectangular shapes and mould into feet, ensuring that you get them almost identical so they look like a pair.

Push the wire into the bottom of the Polysterene and then into the feet.

Repeat for the others.

I've used quick drying modelling clay but you could have just as easily used coloured fimo. This will need to dry over night before painting but it was considerably cheaper than fimo and my shoestring budget meant I selected cost over my time.

Next you need to make the eyes. In the Swapforce version of Skylanders, Chompies have large almost oval eyes so for this, I made a quick template of an elongated oval with a flat bottom that was about two thirds the height of the ball.

As I like to recycle where I can I used the packaging for the Polysterene balls to make the eyes.

For the eyeballs I drew around the template the drew a smaller shape inside of that and cut it out. The space at the bottoms indicates where the outer eye section will be folded and attached to the head.

Using this smaller template I cut out the eyeballs from thin white paper (I used plain copier paper) and drew the pupil on with a black pen.

Putting the eyeballs to one side (to be glued on after the head has been made green) I attached the outer eyes to the heads with a small strip of masking tape.

To make the heads green I first attempted to paint them but it failed miserably as you can see in the photograph below.

The left side of this shows the head after 3 coats of thick paint. You could still see the Polysterene and the brush strokes were visable. It just wasn't going to work.

Instead, I decided to do something similar to papier mâché so made up a mix of PVA glue and water (60:40) and using tissue paper started covering the head.

If you've never done this technique before it's really easy. First apply a thin layer of the glue and water mix to the Polysterene, then apply a couple of squares of tissue paper. Paint over the tissue paper with the glue mix and apply another layer and so on. Continue until the head is covered and there are enough layers to ensure you can see the Polysterene.

Once you've covered the head, paint the now dry clay and add the eyeballs.

Draw a mouth onto some white paper with a black pen. Cut it out and glue it onto some red thin paper. Cut that out and apply to the face with glue.

Now make 5 more!

And done! Roux spotted them in the morning and declared them to be amazing Chompies so I'm very happy they are recogniseable.

I hope you found this tutorial useful and if you do make any please share them with me. I'd love to see all your Skylander makes and could set up a gallery to show them off.

About Me

Hello everyone, I'm a 30 something single stay at home Mum to 2 (soon to be 3) wonderful children.
I adore all things craft and would like somewhere to record my family life so starting a blog and hopefully going to learn lots of things on the way